


all there on public canvas

by sade12



Series: old beginnings [2]
Category: The Ritual (2017)
Genre: Deviation from Canon here and there, Don't worry about Modur essentially., Infidelity, M/M, Possessive Behavior, This is my first time dedicating a work on this website and as such, cannot be held accountable for any damages that occur etc etc, intercrural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22237870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sade12/pseuds/sade12
Summary: Love is mint green, freshly painted, and comes hard as pouring rain.
Relationships: Dom/Luke (The Ritual)
Series: old beginnings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1624948
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	all there on public canvas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squilf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squilf/gifts).



> I want to start by saying 'You should read [my first story for this fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19969609) if you haven't before this one' not so you can have some connective tissue between them, but so you can see the kind of narrative that I have effectively told TWICE now. I reread this, I reread my first, and they are um... duly similar but I hope that disturbs no-one...  
> I wanted to give a different angle to something I already enunciated. If you do end up reading both, my dear reader, I would love to know how they rubbed you differently, if at all.
> 
> Aside from a gift I was very happy to write, this is a test for recycled elements! See if you can notice everywhere I weave the same things in different ways.
> 
> On the gift part: was going to be a short thing initially. Back in August of last year the lovely Squilf commented on my first work for this gloriously tiny community of ours here, "I bet you could create a really hot but also emotional scene with these two." And then I bet similarly that I COULD and I forgot that it didn't have to be this convoluted, but this is where we are!  
> Thank you very much for the request & writing this was a fun learning experience for me. I hope it isn't incoherent. ♡♡♡ Can someone explain to me why AO3 doesn't have a private messaging feature? Squilf just burn this letter after you have read it, thank you.
> 
> That ends the ado. Please enjoy.

“The leg _is_ fine,” he lies, through particularly glittering teeth beneath the hard gust of a flashlight’s ultraviolet blue. His voice betrays him on the _is,_ wavering beneath a pinch of nerves: “Superb, actually.”

Dom is smiling as though two massive batteries worth of sun is not pointed between his eyes and there’s a moment where it’s almost believable, Luke can see his face in the reflection his glasses throw back and he snorts at something- his own expression, maybe. Shimmering. His teeth are just _shimmering,_ made of the moon.

So with a microcosm of respect and his own habitual gentleness winning the evening, Luke sighs, switches the power off and lets his arms drag as he sidles inside; here it is, the _‘biggest- fucking shiniest, too, might I mention, but look how fast that wore out- tent in the whole camping section, ‘best money can buy’ type, yeah- meaning it’s insulated, waterproof, thermal...-efficient, whatever the fuck that part even means, saleslady didn’t have a single clue either’,_ vaunted Dom on the plane, perusing through the duty-free, in the baggage claim, on the heated-seated commercial bus out of the airport and on the dingy one heading up to these sculpted cliffsides of bone white and ashed gray.

When the flashlight is off they are doused in an abiding darkness. On cue, Dom steps away from the role of _palliative diplomat who needs to appease,_ drops his smile, and returns to signal-scrounging, holding his phone up until his arms tire.

Insulated no doubt: the heat is trapped and upon sitting Luke can’t stave back a heave of breath that he hears get chuckled at. “Bad now? Try living in it, ‘turn into a rotisserie fucking chicken by noon. Do _not,_ please, for the sake of _every_ fucking thing in the world, zip that _flap_ up again. Christ almighty. Suffocate if you do.”

“Oh, no. Please don’t talk about food, mate. Too hungry.”

He squints at the screen, his glasses are fogged beyond redemption. “Food? What food? What’d I even say? I already forgot.”

“The, uh... the chicken thing.”

“The- ahhh. Right. Well, ‘could always find a goat up here, couldn’t we? Something along that... evolutionary line.”

“Yeah?”

“Stab it a few times, kill it. Throw it on the spit, partition it in fours, some light seasoning, sauerkraut on the left, _bam._ Bon appetit. Fauna pillaged by ne’er-do-well tourists who’ve somehow landed their heads _distressingly_ far up their own asses.”

“Struggling to imagine needing a _fire,_ going...”

“It’s—” he clicks his tongue, makes a face. “It’s a _fantasy,_ Luke, ‘uh? The real-world schematics don’t– but sure, sure, I mean, let’s just rotate some poor billy goat for an hour and chat _amicably_ while we do it. Sound good?”

“No, not like that. I’m saying- what, we couldn’t just hold it in here for a few minutes? A few seconds, maybe?”

Crickets beneath the brush sing and both men laugh into the rain.

“Tell you what, though, seeing as the thing cost me a _fraction_ on what they’ll nail you down for heating, I’d suggest you invest early, huh? Free stock tips and free estimates every second Tuesday.”

The branches part and Luke looks juvenile beneath the moonscape, skin almost glowing in a manner not unlike a lump of quartz. He smells distinctly of shaving cream, the nicks are visible, and his nose has always assumed a strange shape when he snorts at tasteless jokes (Dom notices, more time allocated to looking at him than his phone).

“Yeah, will do, will do,” says Luke, singsong.

Dom nudges the phone his way: “You wanna do this for me? I can’t fucking see.”

Thunder cracks, mostly blocking out Luke’s laughter. “Yeah, was gonna— I was gonna ask, what’ve you even been doing this whole time?”

“No idea. Tapping. I’ve been tapping. Held one app for too long and I hope it wasn’t important cause it’s gone now. I can see a rough approximation of a blob of you, y’see. Minimal-like.” He plunges into his pocket for a handkerchief, cannot find it, and switches hands to reach the other. “This is _stellar_ for working on humility, if you think abo- ope, got something. Uh... fuck, well why’s it all the way up _there?”_ He whistles twice- “Hey. Lukey-boy. Be my legs, will you?”

“How come? Superb, wasn’t that your word?”

“Well, I’m not _standing_ just to be up there for three seconds ‘fore the connection drops again, am I? Leg _is_ superb, I’m just being rational. There’s another word for you, rational.”

One of those miniature deli fans is blading through the air which has formed within itself a thick, musky vapor; heat does not travel within nor outward and back into the drizzle, heat sits and lies prone. Dom has too much color in his face as it is, the lantern’s light provides an amusing glimpse of reddened cheekbones sheening with dew when it’s turned on and the tent is bathed alive in the warm half of the color spectrum.

Luke undoes his laces, takes the phone with a snicker, and tamps around in his socks as he traverses the oven.

Waterproof not so either: he finds that there indeed is a smidge of connection but recoils fast from a drip- direct into the audio jack. “Oh.”

“In all honesty, though, this is fucking awful,” Dom says in the backdrop, and from just his voice it’s unclear whether he saw that or was looking at his superb leg.

(He wants Luke to take the jacket off, there’s a nice little ribbed turtleneck somewhere beneath all of that. A few visits – _visit_ really isn’t a word which describes what he was doing there, but it sounds good in his head – while he was packing: Dom would tease, point out that the tags always denoted _slim._ Luke would always contest this.

He looks younger from behind, that faint little down of hair dressing the back of his neck. There’s a mole there somewhere.)

“So we all had... a little armchair chat, therapy session, NATO meeting, alright, with _fuck_ knows what back there, I am _well_ cocking aware, but... ‘was kinda nice, wasn’t it? In there. In the house, I’m saying. Think about it, we had... a stove and that. Not bad. Better by comparison. What’d he say?– Lesser of the evils-” here, he thumbs his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as the phone is handed back- “-ground wasn’t _damp_ between your _fuck_ ing legs. So what’s the report, how’d you do? Did we make contact with the mothership?”

“We did. I _think_ we did, anyway, the bars keep... ‘probably fine. My tent has this, um.... draft from the top of it, should’ve told you sooner, but... uh-huh. The stove was nice, yeah, but this is something else.”

“Say, it, ain’t, so. Well, if I paid for _thermal_ efficiency I guess someone ought to feel it.”

“It’s warm.” Luke lays down, sort of, in what little space there is to do so. His left leg bends when it tries not to collide with Dom’s, and here an interlude of comfortable quiet comes and goes. “Are you calling the lodge? I hope you’re calling the lodge.”

“No, you know who I’m...” His smile flickers as he trails off. “...Oh, pssh, that ship’s still docked? Can’t imagine why.”

“Cause we paid good money, that’s wh-”

“Kind of worried about the inevitable day, right, when you’re gonna wake up, realize how the world _actually_ works, and that beautiful little glint of innocence you’ve got in your eyes is just going to, like, fizz out. Get whacked. ‘Piss in the wind.”

Luke wants to say that he doesn’t know who, actually.

Mumble it out like a student admitting confusion; he wants to pretend. _‘No, who?’_ he asks in his head, hears in his voice and nearly hears off his tongue, naïve and sanguine.

“Come _off it,_ you paid for the suite with heated floors. _Wailing._ We get there, our rooms have people in them, that’s the first thing you’re going to do.”

“Well, of _course_ I’m going to _wail,_ that’s the _thing_ that I do. You think this is gonna be the first reception desk I’ve screamed at?”— the latter half of his words are almost obscured by giggling— “Please. Do you even know me?”

(Luke’s one concession to the heat is to unzip his jacket and swipe the back of his hand against his forehead as he heaves again. Humidity always curls his hair more, Dom can recollect, as in... instances when he’s fresh out of the shower.

 _Id est,_ a mint-green towel upheld by the knobs of his hips. Pores scrubbed clean. At this point of the night Dom flips through channels more busily or types quicker to feign inattention, pretending to not watch the steam-surrounded glasslike _new_ ness of him: he pops out of the bathroom a new person, practically, all stiff in his arms and drawn-up. Walking with a bit more power than what is usual, rounding the kitchen island and immediately falling back into his slight slump in posture while perusing the fridge. It’s cute. Yogurt. Pulling out a chair. Grown man, three and a half fourths naked, sitting down at the table for a 32 oz cup.)

Strange things dance in Dom’s face. Patience, or something like it, as colors begin to fill the fluorescent white stripe baked vertically on his nose. A page is loading, maybe an app– not close enough to see– and this does not repeat itself because the air of patience siphons out as he types something. Dramatic swings between anger and nothing, judging by his eyebrows. A minuscule clench of his jaw, drawn backward.

(After being given his own key, Dom contributes towards the rent and buys a new ten-pack of Vanilla and Strawberry Greek cups. Gratitude, that.

‘Oh, did you—’ Luke exclaims, pulling out of the fridge so fast he hits his head against the door, compacting downward with a swear; Dom has one responsibility and it is to _not cackle._ He fails, of course.)

Luke starts watching the rain instead.

He doesn’t want to know, he feels he shouldn’t and can’t as it is information too heavy for his body, but he asks anyway: “How are things?”

“I’m hoping that they’ve started to print out missing persons posters down there instead of just, uh, booking over us, which, to be frank, I _would_ do at this point if it was up to me. Aside from that? Oh, _splendid,_ splendid. Looking forward to coffee, as well.”

Dom likes the look he gets from that. Luke’s head whips up, which flits water everywhere, and the look is dislocated enough from the rest of his body language to suggest an anticipated elaboration— which Dom will not provide. They don’t talk about her much.

It’s a delicate game they play, the _‘No, who?’_ , mutual and on an unspoken plane.

And thus Dom, undaunted, continues: “So how come you didn’t bring your bag over, huh? Can’t imagine you _wouldn’t_ want to stay the night, ‘practically got fucking plumbing.”

And thus Luke parries with the Master of Evasion, Emeritus: “...Well, you know. Just- came by to come by. Check on you. The leg.”

“The _leg._ Which means you can’t sleep, smoking didn’t work and counting little Bo's running over to see him at the gates didn’t either. How close am I?”

 _‘How are things’,_ what a clipped question, said in that just-nearly-heartbroken bedside manner he’s got of saying every other thing... the little gray text bubbles are piling up in an Ionic column and both— _‘No, who?’_ — pretend not to hear the sound because it, much like _them,_ does not exist.

With his hands laid flat, Luke smooths out the creases in the sleeping bag and the adjunct duvet while great lines of water slide down his brow. Panting, now. Dom watches and sits steady.

 _Ping, ping, ping._ He doesn’t remember what he told her, been looking at Luke too long. A jab of his thumb slides the app’s interface left into oblivion and he places the whole thing down very carefully. He fumbles out some apology after considering his words, and his voice is slightly flatter in affect, damp beneath the swelter.

“Hot.” Long pause, creasing noises. “I’m really. You know. I’m just sweating a lot. That’s- just it. That’s it, I mean. I’m good.”

“Might want to lose the thermals if you’re...” Longer pause. His phone is still singing and he silences it, hands ruddy. “Sticking around. Which you should.”

“...Feels... just feels weird when you, you text her when I’m in the room. Or call her or something. I don’t know, it, like-”

Luke finishes the sentence in his head, _reminds me of how fucked it is._ Dom does the same, _right,_ _kinda_ _breaks the immersion._

Dom rolls his shoulders, waits until he has Luke’s eyes, and nods towards the tent flap. Mouths something.

Hardly breaking his gaze, Luke props himself up to zip it. The sound cuts through the air.

It started in rain like this, lifetimes ago.

No great romantic circumstance, no falling of moonlit stars, far closer to the side of it that the soaps are reluctant to portray: an uncontrolled stutter of passion that fostered its’ own chronology, really. A blip. A vacancy of reason. _Something accidental,_ Dom tells himself. No brakes and subsequently no breaks.

It was raining just this hard as they sped through Brussels in a rental that smelled of cardboard, this massive tricolor map splayed across Luke’s thighs. Left-hand car light on as he squinted at it, droplets gracing his brow (he’s just sweating a lot, as he does, poor thing) from the small crack in the window— just to get the smell out. Works, somewhat. Heavy darkness, close to midnight, some nondescript alternative jazz wafting through the radio and Dom drove, being the better driver of them despite the license suspension... _‘Doesn’t carry over to other countries, does it?’_ he quipped, Luke vaguely remembers.

This travel venture was dartboard; they’re always _going somewhere,_ had long ago since wanted to _._ Phil’s flight was delayed by five hours because of the same storm that rolled over them and rendered direction signs invisible, Rob boarded the wrong passenger bus and wound up half a day into the wrong slice of countryside because he couldn’t see either. So he said, anyway, before his phone died. It’s been a while since anyone’s heard from him and Luke’s holding his phone against his chest with his chin in case the screen should light up, dye his neck in fluorescent white.

Dom isn’t the best driver but he can’t parse a map _‘for shit’_ and thus their roles were finalized. Dom goes too fast. Dom goes faster than anyone should on a road that’s half street, half inland sea. Telling him to slow down garners a reminder of their urgency and faster driving.

On this chauffeur one hand garrotes the wheel, veins in his arm hammering up to the finger that bears an imprint where a gold band once sat. It was a polo shirt so his arms were out, patterned maybe— the details are gone to Luke, everything up to the last _‘slow_ down, _every time you hit a pothole I-’_ is smeared somewhat and lost in a mutter.

Stress, Dom admit a breath after he grabbed Luke’s arm at the only stoplight he’d heeded in a mile. Then he’d sat, pausing- where was he going with this, even? One attempt to reign himself in and apologize, get _back to the bloody road_ while he was at it, and failing laughably after ten seconds of struggling to recall patience quotes from that meditation thing Gayle visits on Tuesdays.

“Listen,” he started, and pulled over; talked for a while and a while more. And after diagramming out entire metrics of his marital life (“—and it’s kind of what you expect, this, that, the usual, one domestic to the next. But it’s like this fucked _reverse_ couples’ counseling, Lukey, cause you’re there trying to never see the person again and for _three hours_ a week - or so - you’ve got to... got to sit down with them and argue about, what, who’s getting which dining chairs. Maddening. Fucking, _mad_ dening. The questions really do get that banal, I am _not_ fucking around on that, okay— they ask all of those little- but then there’s the really intensive, personal shit woven in com _pletely_ out of place, the shit you don’t like to even _think_ about. They start _digging._ And _then_ the _next_ week they want to know why the both of us don’t agree on who the best fucking Italian fucking fresco painter was. I walk out of there feeling dead, Luke. Fucking dead.”) for Luke’s overwhelmed congress, the latter opened his mouth to offer advice but was spoken over by a loud _‘-wha- and why’ve you had the map upside down this whole time? How tired are you?’_

_‘Uh...’_

They switched seats, switched to GPS, and the irrationality of both came to a neat conclusion. Hutch was already at the hotel- townhouse, really- and they picked Rob up in the morning an hour after they got Phil. Singing folk songs on the way back, stopping for pictures wherever the landscape warranted it.

(Luke, backseat, staring at the lint between his shoes and feeling unhelpful- guilty? restless, sweaty, etc- until the feeling passed.)

But since it hadn’t passed at all he’d later said, to be helpful:

“If you need a place to crash, then, ‘got a spare room that I, uh, could clean. I’ll put the radiator back in and that. It gets any worse, she puts you out again, there’s an option.”

Dom’s seen that spare room dozens of times. Sitting on the kitchen table, it was as always blurred in the peripherals while he instead cooed over the particularly lean Luke, fishbelly pale in a new amber turtleneck. Never been inside, when he thinks about it, but he’s seen the creases in the bedsheets folded over in perfectly shaped triangles.

The memories are filtered through a shitty rabbit-eared TV set. The picture was taken crystal clear, but the dusting (of guilt) has blackened the corners and the colors are fading.

Dom’s hand is on the back of Luke’s neck, stroking his thumb around and looking for the mole. He doesn’t ask him to listen anymore because he does that anyway, unflaggingly, all of the time.

A spare room.

(Which of them misinterpreted it?

 _It_ starts after Brussels. Initially just taking Luke up on his offer, but going further with it: long conversations till early hours, watching the wake of dawn together on the roof of his building, impromptu visits to Cologne or Bruges, calls that became so regular Dom could set a watch to them, a determined movie night each week, dinners which gradually escalated into being more expensive, at fancier venues— and finally, the spare key.

Luke didn’t understand the look on his face at first. _‘What?’_

And then they had to argue. It was a heavy conversation, mobile- Dom can’t sit still, they went from the kitchen table to the couch to the roof and back to the table. The fresh air helped, and once the pounding in his ears stopped Luke looked past the aplomb he’d grown so used to and looked at the statement for what it was:

 _‘We’re— have you-’_ a brief bemused laugh- _‘have you noticed that we’re dating? Did that, uh, strike you yet?’_

Agreeing with it, even, albeit reluctantly.

That same night, after one greasy but fullhearted dinner, waking from a nap on the couch. 1 AM, somewhere around a quarter to 2. Dom rose, blanket sagging off a languid arm as he inched towards the spare room because his back just wasn’t straight anymore. Away to that odd place he’s never been to. Radiator and everything.

 _It_ has much to do with the fact they have more in common than they’d ever thought possible, like the insomnia: he’d wound up walking into the main bedroom, Luke awake on his side and breathing too heavily. Empty space bracketing him on both sides, stirred sheets. Lots of honking from beyond the window, someone cheers and others laugh.

On the cue of footsteps, he sits up. Immediately puts the cigarette out.

Adrenaline. They have an awkward fit, Luke sort of bent. Block of wood. He doesn’t know where to put his legs. Thighs touch once Luke stops his fidgeting, Dom’s chest touches his back and they both wait for the weight to settle.

His hand rests light upon the flat of his hip, unconsciously. He thinks he’s Gayle. Muscle memory. Luke shudders as though hit by lightning and smacks the nightstand to get his pack and his lighter, shifts around in the center of the bed desperately trying to figure out what to do. Fish out of water. Kicking.

That’s where Dom always puts his hand, _would_ put his hand before she started smacking it away, telling him to sleep on the couch. Yelling at him to sleep on the couch. This bed, its abiding softness, feels, much like Luke’s bizarre arm placement at the moment, awkward. Where’s the three ribs that divide the cushions, where’s the firmness of the armrest? More comfortable, really, he thinks whilst Luke begins to hyperventilate double time.

He stops by the parted door of the spare room, peers in at the radiator and its slight tilt on his way to the bathroom. Opens the mirror cabinet, fishes out the pills and returns with them.

He’s been bringing them for several months. The difference now is demarcated by his getting back into bed instead of retreating to the living room, the difference is demarcated by the very new way that he takes Luke in.

The sight is the same, but it’s not. Luke sitting tucked away in the same spot he always sidles into for every attack, framed by the white walls he’s never going to paint. His eyes hang tired on his face, cheekbones starting to sink- it used to be easier to mistake him for being younger. Fine bygone smile-wrinkles that are starting to disappear. Same exhausted grimace, imprinted on his lips even after it’s gone.

It’s doubly gone after Dom pulls his face away, off of his. He’s smiling then.)

There’s guilt in it, even if imperceptible, just as always when Dom finds the mole. Foreheads pressed together and glances low, uncalculating... Who knows, at this point. Maybe they’re just lonely. Maybe it’s all as artless as it feels and there isn’t a deeper meaning. Turning gears with no context. No stars, no poetry. No philosophy, just _it._ It for its’ own sake.

In the hollow pit of his hand he grips his waist, holds fast to one of the knobs that keeps his towels high. Pulls until the gap closed: noses then chests then waists Luke is sitting on his lap all awkward like the block of wood he is. Swerving to avoid the leg, trying to stay lined up forward and not doing all that well at it.

Dom is still pulling, both arms binding him though there’s no space left. He looks for Gayle’s curves like he always does and grunts when he doesn’t find them. Their supplanters are of their own make, Luke is less refined and has these points where his bones jut through his skin more than they ought to. Different. Responds differently to the same touches that have been trained through the weather, fair and storming both, of marriage— sometimes when he’s feeling particularly cracked he imagines finally getting through the paperwork, forgetting the names of her family members and walking barefoot upon the broken glass of custody deliberation all to turn around and kneel to Luke. He replays the clip in his head over and over and each time the image contrast grows until it’s a useless mound of whites and blacks and Luke’s face is blinding.

Dom has the useless smile and glinting teeth of someone who routinely wakes up sobbing at unimaginable hours. He’s fading into the background of his own portrait. Bleak.

She always had this... confidence in lingerie, Luke has been getting progressively more self-conscious since Rob died. Doesn’t strip. Never does, _‘can’t’,_ he says. Sits there and waits (sweating, as he does, poor thing) until Dom wants to see him naked, practically. Stops himself from saying something when his jacket is slid off his arms, sighs instead into the trapped air. It’s quiet, mannered, and the wheels start to turn. No dirty talk, never that, it didn’t work for them.

Previously they’d just writhe on his too-small,-expected-to-be-single-forever bed and be fine with the gratification of contact— isn’t that what Dom wants after all; not sex, necessarily, but rather to have something and not let go of it. Not have to. No questions down the road. For stasis, just once, just _stasis,_ the _surety_ of stasis-

Luke’s chin hooks over his shoulder. He pulls Dom’s hand toward his longjohns, slides it beneath the cloth.

Blinding.

He needs to know, too. Luke needs his voice to be humbled in the great mountain of Dom’s shoulder as much as he needs to be cradled, to be whispered to, because _they_ and _it_ exist at no other times than these. None of it... counts, when they break it down to the hard math, so long as Dom is off for three hours per week staring at a pen stain on the lawyer’s breast pocket while Gayle asks to his deaf ears why he wants _all_ of the baby pictures.

Lots of noise, fabric shifting awfully and the beautiful intervals where Dom isn’t allowed to think about anything else. When it gets around to the- the part where Luke hitches in harsh breath, presses down too hard and folds inward a little, it’s his bed all over again. It’s assorted memories doused in bordeaux and tired AMs. It’s that one time in Bruges and all the other places where passion vaulted in too loudly.

Then comes the spotlight of his own arousal, bleached ugly and blinding as he starts to thrust up against the inside of Luke’s thigh. He wonders if he wouldn’t have _hmm_ ed that way in content if he wasn’t also tugging at him, or trying to. He wonders if instead of reaching down to undo his fly, sighing the whole time all soft, Luke would’ve pushed him away and dropped what Dom _knows,_ at least in part, to be an act. Yelled at him to go take the couch or give the radiator purpose.

He also wonders if Gayle is off cheating alongside him, skipping yoga and wearing mint-green lace for someone else. Dom laughs when he hears himself for the first time tonight, the ghost of his voice, the _wheezes_ he’s making, cringing that she had to hear this shit too, deal with it too, and that anyone has had to.

Dom shucks Luke’s longjohns down just enough to keep his thighs together and unable to part much, leaving just enough space between for him to—

Then he’s rutting up in between, hard enough to get down to bone (which he might not be if he wasn’t thinking about smashing both his own and Gayle’s faces in for the fact that it didn’t _work)_ and it’s like being rode by a dream when Luke abets it.

He wants to be gentle with Luke, he really does, he _really_ does and he wants to not break the thing he doesn’t want to return or pay for (the phone is silent but the screen keeps lighting up) although he’s not encouraging himself to have hope because the more animal portion of him that flatly just _cares_ less— his thrusts gain speed, turn more frantic, Luke can’t keep pace— _really_ wants even more than usual to just fuck him, _do_ it already. Walk out to that downland they’ve never been to before, this one time while the rain is blinding the world.

Luke’s voice cracks when Dom suggests, even, that’s there’s enough precipitation and sweat and slick for them to— pause.

It’s less than another second of hoisting himself up and down before his chest hitches, his gasp comes out in the balefire _louder_ way and Luke finishes, Dom cooing him quiet as the percussion of his heart loses altitude. It’s cute.

It takes a span longer of brushing fingers through his hair and grunting into the tightness before Dom can have an... abrupt flash of memory, to a point a near decade ago when they were _happy_ and it was _working_ and on a routine enough basis (sometimes Tuesdays) he’d work Gayle apart with his fingers, the way her shoulders would come up as she breathed, how her breasts would spill out from mint-green and into his jealous, jealous pits of his palms— for all the many people who had ever looked at her twice, for herself knowing who she is, for the intangibility of being someone who could always gauge herself, for knowing she would never need to cheat.—

Then it’s veins, the velocity and heat of blood, Luke’s acquiescence and his laying very still as his thighs are spilled onto, spilled over. He pulls the turtleneck over his nose and breathes, breathes, breathes in crescendo until hyperventilation, breathes, breathes. Cries, even.

Dom cleans up in silence, measuring his heartbeats slower, only. Only until he. Only until he has enough breath in him to get up and toddle through rain coming down tenfold harder than before and slosh through an inland sea to retrieve those same pills, passing that same radiator as he does it. Calm him down. Find the mole again.

He has another memory, come to think of it, as Luke sobs into him:

_(‘Didn’t you quit?’_

_‘Do you—’_ his shaking hand loitered over the ashtray- _‘do you want to? Do you want to date?’)_


End file.
